A Placer County teacher was arrested in connection with child molestation cases from more than 20 years ago, police said Thursday.

James McNealy Carroll, 64, of Roseville, was taken into custody Wednesday on an arrest warrant for six felony counts of child molestation, according to Sunnyvale police.

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The incidents involving Carroll happened between the late 1980s through 1997 while Carroll lived in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. The victim is a relative who also lived in the area.

Carroll is currently a science and art teacher at Horizon Charter Schools in Placer County. He’s been with the school since 2009, were he taught at the Roseville and Auburn campuses.

“This has been a complete surprise to us,” Horizon Superintendent Cynthia Wood said. “He’s a credentialed teacher, and all of our teachers are fully certified and go through the Department of Justice System.”

Wood said she had no reason to believe any of Carroll’s students were victims, but the district sent letters home to the families of all 2,400 students letting them know of the arrest.

Meantime, the Roseville Police Department is asking parents whose kids were students in Carroll’s classes to talk to them and ask if anything inappropriate happened.

“Any time someone gets arrested on these type of charges and they’re a teacher or they’re in a position where they’ve worked with children, we need to let the public know just in case,” police spokesperson Dee Dee Gunther said.

Carroll was Emma Laughlin’s biology and computer teacher in 2012 and 2013. Laughlin said she was as surprised as anybody to learn the man she considered her favorite teacher is accused of child molestation.

“I was in shock, I would have never suspected that,” Laughlin said. “He never came across as creepy or weird -- or having ever done anything like that.”

In addition to his teaching duties at school, Carroll was a volunteer and part-time staffer at Valley Springs Presbyterian Church in Roseville.

“He’s the epitome of a family man, a Christian man, and to hear this is such a shock,” Carroll’s neighbor Sharon Ewing said.

In a statement to KCRA 3 News, the church’s operations manager Annette Seeber wrote, “We are committed to protecting our children through stringent background checks, yearly staff training and it is our policy that no less than two adults at any given time are left alone with a child."